The union treaty, meanwhile, was crumbling. Gorbachev continued negotiating, but so did Yeltsin. The Russian president pressured the Soviet one finally to recognize the independence of the Baltic states. Even the republics that had seemed to favor the Union before the coup now declared independence. Gorbachev, however, kept trying to convene meetings on the treaty. But Ukraine, the second-largest republic, now boycotted them. Finally, on December 7, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus convened a meeting at which they devised the formal dissolution of the USSR and invented a consolation
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